Employees need more than just gyms for exercise incentives to work

Mr Fuller found successful employee participation in exercise requires organisations to look at more than simply providing the infrastructure. Image: JLBM PAOEMPLOYEE’S experiences of workplace exercise incentives have been investigated as part of a University of Notre Dame (Fremantle) PhD study.

Research explored exercise incentives offered by four medium-sized organisations in Perth and sought to find what impacts on people’s ability and willingness to exercise, and how organisations can sustain and improve their approaches.

The study found time, own health and motivation were main obstacles, closely followed by logistics, work commitments, family commitments, energy, weather, money and other commitments.

Study author Troy Fuller, who has 20 years of experience in the public and private sectors, says research focused on organisational exercise because of the sedentary nature of the 21st century workplace, the blurring of work and home boundaries, and the subsequent expectation from employees that their employer provide some level of support for them to exercise.

“People are expected to be available to work anytime, are working odd hours, and are contactable after hours in a lot of jobs so we’ve got all sorts of pressures on us,” Mr Fuller says.

“And as a result of that—what I saw, and what research says, is that employees are expecting some help for things like their health and exercise that previously they used to do outside of work.”

Mr Fuller found successful employee participation in exercise requires organisations to look at more than simply providing the infrastructure.

“It’s not enough just to make some activities available,” he says.

“It’s not enough because they won’t always feel comfortable to take it up, and even if they do, maybe they are likely to get injured or won’t feel motivated to do it or maybe there won’t be the infrastructure for them to get changed and have a shower and come back to work.”

Mr Fuller has developed an Exercise Incentives Model outlining six dimensions that research found was vital to successful exercise incentives programs.